Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Eco-evolutionary dynamics in grasslands during land use change: consequences for plant-microbe interactions and ecosystem function

Jenalle L. Eck, Tsipe Aavik, Kadri Koorem, et al.

Published: 2024-06-01
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

1. Land use change can cause the loss of plant species and functional diversity, but whether it drives eco-evolutionary changes within plant species is unclear. 2. Semi-natural grasslands are particularly threatened by land use change, including management intensification on productive soils and abandonment on marginal land. As such, they serve as an excellent system for exploring if and how [...]

Evolutionary principles underpinning codon usage bias: patterns, functions, and mechanisms

Alexander Lloyd Cope, Michael A. Gilchrist, Premal Shah, et al.

Published: 2024-05-30
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Synonymous codons are used unevenly despite coding for the same amino acid. Recent work has provided critical insights into the functions, mechanisms, and fitness consequences of codon usage bias and synonymous mutations. However, experiments aimed at understanding the role of synonymous mutations often involve only a small number of reporter genes. How do these observations generalize across [...]

The role of large language models in interdisciplinary research: opportunities, challenges, and ways forward

Christos Mammides, Harris Papadopoulos

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

1.        Large language models (LLMs) are gaining importance in research as they offer many benefits. One often overlooked benefit is their potential to facilitate and support interdisciplinary research, which is key to addressing current global challenges, such as the twin crises of biodiversity loss and climate change. 2.        LLMs can help reduce the [...]

Poor hypotheses and research waste in biology: learning from a theory crisis in psychology

Shinichi Nakagawa, David W Armitage, Tom Froese, et al.

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

While psychologists have extensively discussed a ‘theory crisis’, there has been no debate about such a crisis in biology. However, biologists, especially those working in the fields of ecology and evolution, have long discussed communication failures between theoreticians and empiricists. We argue such failure is one aspect of a theory crisis because misapplied and misunderstood [...]

Navigating phylogenetic conflict and evolutionary inference in plants with target capture data

Elizabeth M Joyce, Alexander N Schmidt-Lebuhn, Harvey K Orel, et al.

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Bioinformatics, Biology, Botany, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences, Research Methods in Life Sciences

Target capture has quickly become a preferred approach for plant systematic and evolutionary research, marking a step-change in the generation of data for phylogenetic inference. While this advancement has facilitated the resolution of many phylogenetic relationships, phylogenetic conflict continues to be reported, and often attributed to genome duplication, reticulation, deep coalescence or [...]

Multiple Disturbances, Multiple Legacies: Fire, Canopy Gaps, and Deer Jointly Change the Forest Seed Bank

Samuel Powers Reed, Alejandro A Royo, Walter P Carson, et al.

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Forest Sciences, Life Sciences, Plant Sciences

The manipulation of pre-colonial disturbances in U.S. forests can play a critical role in determining ecological composition, structure, and function. However, our understanding of how concurrent disturbances influence non-tree species is extremely limited in forests. To this end, we used a long-term, multi-disturbance experiment in an oak dominated forest in West Virginia, U.S.A. that [...]

Is the audience gender-blind? Smaller attendance in female talks highlights imbalanced visibility in academia

Júlia Rodrigues Barreto, Isabella Romitelli, Pamela Cristina Santana, et al.

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Sciences, Evolution, Gender Equity in Education, Higher Education, Inequality and Stratification, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Psychological Phenomena and Processes

Although diverse perspectives are fundamental for fostering and advancing science, power relations have limited the development, propagation of ideas, and recognition of political minority groups in academia. Gender bias is one of the most well-documented processes, leading women to drop out of their academic careers due to fewer opportunities and lower recognition. Using long-term data [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Central Pacific

Joanna C. Ellison, Nicholas J. Crameri, Ena Suarez

Published: 2024-05-27
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

The Central Pacific mangrove province is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology) including the marine ecoregions of the Gilbert/Ellis Islands, Marshall Islands, Phoenix/Tokelau/Northern Cook Islands, and Samoa Islands. The Central Pacific mangroves had a mapped extent in 2020 of 4.8 km2, representing less than 0.01% of the global mangrove area. The biota [...]

Behavioral flexibility is related to foraging, but not social or habitat use behaviors, in a species that is rapidly expanding its range

Corina J Logan, Dieter Lukas, Xuewen Geng, et al.

Published: 2024-05-24
Subjects: Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Psychology

The ability of other species to adapt to human modified environments is increasingly crucial because of the rapid expansion of this landscape type. Behavioral flexibility, the ability to change behavior in the face of a changing environment by packaging information and making it available to other cognitive processes, is hypothesized to be a key factor in a species’ ability to successfully adapt [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Eastern Coral Triangle

Daniel M. Alongi, Norman C. Duke, Joanna C. Ellison, et al.

Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of the Eastern Coral Triangle are a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the Bismarck Sea, Solomon Archipelago, Solomon Sea, and Southeast Papua New Guinea. The mapped extent of mangroves in this province in 2020 was 2128.9 km2, representing 1.4% of the global mangrove area. The Eastern Coral Triangle is [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the South Kuroshio

Tomomi Inoue, Shigeyuki Baba, Yasuaki Akaji, et al.

Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of the South Kuroshio is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the Central Kuroshio Current and South Kuroshio. In 2020, the mapped extent of the South Kuroshio mangrove province was 8.0 km2, representing less than 0.01% of the global mangrove area; the biota is characterized by 19 true mangrove species. [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific

Luis Valderrama-Landeros, Francisco Flores-de-Santiago, Giovanni Ávila-Flores, et al.

Published: 2024-05-22
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of the South-Californian Pacific and the Gulf of California. The mapped extent of the Warm Temperate Northeast Pacific mangrove province in 2020 was 1,810.4 km², which represents 1.5% of the global mangrove area. There are three [...]

Ten golden rules for restoration to secure resilient and just seagrass social-ecological systems

Richard Kazimierz Frank Unsworth, Benjamin Lawrence Hopper Jones, Chiara Bertelli, et al.

Published: 2024-05-20
Subjects: Biodiversity, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Marine Biology, Plant Sciences

It is unequivocal that the world has lost a significant proportion of its seagrass, and although glimmers of hope exist, losses continue with many ongoing negative trajectories. First and foremost, we need to put the world on a global pathway to seagrass net gain. Conservation of what remains must be a priority, but we need to increase coverage at rates unlikely to be achieved naturally; [...]

A minimum data standard for wildlife disease studies

Tess Stevens, Ryan Zimmerman, Greg Albery, et al.

Published: 2024-05-19
Subjects: Animal Diseases, Biodiversity, Bioinformatics, Diseases, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Environmental Microbiology and Microbial Ecology Life Sciences, Life Sciences, Microbiology, Parasitic Diseases, Veterinary Infectious Diseases, Veterinary Medicine, Virology, Virus Diseases

Thousands of scientists and practitioners conduct research on infectious diseases of wildlife. Rapid and comprehensive data sharing is vital to the transparency and actionability of their work, but unfortunately, most efforts designed to publically share these data are focused on pathogen determination and genetic sequence data. Other facets of existing surveillance data – particularly [...]

IUCN Red List of Ecosystems, Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic

Carlos Troche-Souza, Ariel E. Lugo, Tamara Heartsill-Scalley, et al.

Published: 2024-05-15
Subjects: Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Mangroves of the Tropical Northwestern Atlantic is a regional ecosystem subgroup (level 4 unit of the IUCN Global Ecosystem Typology). It includes the marine ecoregions of Bahamian, Carolinian, Eastern Caribbean, Floridian, Greater Antilles, Northern Gulf of Mexico, Southern Caribbean, Southern Gulf of Mexico, Southwestern Caribbean and Western Caribbean. The mapped extent of mangroves in 2020 [...]

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